How to Make a Bit-for-Bit Copy of Hard Drive? [Freeware]

If you want to clone each bit of one hard drive to another hard drive for an identical copy, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a nice choice, with which you can easily make a bit-for-bit copy of hard drive in Windows PC.

Emily

By Emily / Updated on May 12, 2023

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What is bit by bit copy and when need it?

The bit-for-bit copy of a hard drive is a copy where each bit of that copy is identical to the corresponding bit in the original disk. It is also called a sector-by-sector clone. This copy method will clone all sectors no matter they are used or not, even if the sector is blank or has a logically bad sector. So, the destination hard drive is exactly the same as the source hard disk and keeps identical properties such as drive status, drive size, drive letter, the number of volumes, etc. 

This bit-for-bit hard drive copy method will be quite necessary and useful when you want an exact look of the old disk on a new disk, or you need to clone hard drive with bad sectors. Next, we will show how to copy a hard drive bit-for-bit.

Freeware for bit-for-bit disk clone in Windows PC

Here, we would like to share a free hard drive cloning tool named AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It is a free yet powerful partition manager for all editions of Windows 11/10, 8, 7 and Windows XP/Vista users. Its "Disk Clone Wizard" and "Partition Clone Wizard"come with the "Sector by Sector Clone" method, permitting you to clone a hard drive or partition bit by bit. Besides, there are also “Clone Disk Quickly” and “Clone Partition Quickly”, allowing you to clone used sectors to the destination location, or clone larger drive to smaller drive.

No matter if you want to bit-by-bit copy of hard drive, SSD, USB flash drive or SD card in Windows 11/10/8/7 or Windows XP/Vista, this freeware can satisfy you well. You can click the below button to free download this bit-by-bit copy software and have a try.

Download Freeware Win 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download

4 Steps to make a bit-for-bit copy of a hard drive

After you download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard on your computer PC, you can take the following steps to copy the hard drive bit-for-bit.

Preparations you need to make:
1. Connect the destination disk to your computer and make sure it is detected. Back up the disk and delete all partitions on it to make unallocated space for clone.
2. Make sure the destination hard drive is large enough to hold all sectors on the source drive since it will clone every used and unused bit.

Step 1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant. Click “Clone Disk” in the right menu.

Clone Disk

Step 2. Choose "Sector-by-Sector Clone" in the window and click on "Next".

Sector By Sector Clone

Step 3. Select the destination disk and click on "Next".

Select Destination Disk

Note: Here comes a note about how to boot computer from the cloned disk afterward. If you are cloning a data disk, just ignore it.

Boot Note

Step 4. In the main interface, click "Apply" and "Proceed" to execute the bit-for-bit disk clone.

Apply

Then all bits will be cloned to the destination hard drive. For cloning system hard drive bit by bit, the Standard version only supports MBR disk to MBR disk clone. If you plan to copy MBR-based system disk to GPT, GPT to MBR, or GPT to GPT, please upgrade to Professional edition.

Summary

So, with the help of AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, you can effortlessly make a bit-for-bit copy of a hard drive in Windows 11,10, 8, 7. Additionally, it has many other wonderful features: move/merge/clone/check partition, convert MBR and GPT without deleting partitions, transfer OS between MBR and MBR disk, make bootable media and more. If you want to enjoy those functions on Windows Server 2019/2016/2012/2008/20003, you can use the AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.

Emily
Emily · Staff Editor
Emily is an English editor of AOMEI Technology; she has a great passion for providing easy solutions for people to tackle with all disk or partition management problems. In addition to writing articles about disk/partition management, she also edits great tutorials on how to back up and restore disk for data security. In her spare time, she loves to learn computer skill to improve herself or stay with her family to enjoy a good day.